http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/16/732205/-Green-shoots:-youd-better-be-grateful!

and also inspired by NBBooks' most recent diary.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

this economic crisis is one of many interrelated ones

shifting the way we think & operate (individually, collectively) upward would be the intelligent and compassionate way

the current failure to seize opportunities, inherent in the economic crisis, exacerbates the other crises (climate, water, governance, migration, urbanization, conflict, raw materials, oil and gas, more)

thus exposing the systemic character of our predicament

as Western societies we're sort of underdeveloped regarding head-heart connections, preventing us from acting upon what we somewhere know we should do: make a serious effort into finding out how to serve 7 future generations of all species. And clean up our mess in the process: `suffer' the loss of conspicuous consumption, learn to appreciate important and even existential qualities now easily overlooked (`slow life' and `transition towns' amongst others)

what makes it so hard for us to make progress is that we focus on same level 'solutions' (more regulations & better oversight, better markets, better incentives, more money, clean cut between sober old style banks from high roller investment banks, whatever)

while we know that won't save our a$$.  But since we don't have a clue what else, onwards we go to a new iteration of what we're going through now. Given the building up of the other interrelated crises, the next iteration will be deeper, worse, possible causing irreparable damage in other crises-domains

smart nor compassionate

so, what does work?

shift up: reinforce the head-heart connections in order to find out that the fear, anxiety, sense of lack, existential separations we're trying to overcome are fundamentally illusory (as in http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/loy12.htm)

that we always already were one and when we now look with at the `crises', they've become inevitable stepping stones towards larger circles of compassion. Opportunities to live lives based on love, instead of fear.

think about banking.

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

I am thinking about Swedish banks. They had own crisis almost two decades ago, right? And recently they were pouring money to the Baltic real estate markets like mad. They surely knew what they were doing, not?

European Tribune - Green shoots: you'd better be grateful!

Taxpayers have poured trillions of dollars into institutions that most never knew they were guaranteeing. In return, economies look as if they have been spared a collapse in payment systems and credit flows that would probably have caused a depression.

That is a load of selfmaster-serving shit from The Economist. This is nothing that a number of well-timed bank interventions by the FDIC or equivalent banking regulators/deposit insurance schemes in other countries couldn't have solved.

What has been rescued here is (in this order):

• Bank CEOs
  
• Bank shareholders
  
• Bank creditors (who happen to be other banks)

It there had at any point been a risk to the payment systems, something else would have been done. And the credit flows did collapse.

The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buitler

In Spain, the economic newspaper Expansión front-paged the following story last week with the headline "ZP insinuates there'll be a swoop of the hosepipe to help the cajas".  

Zapatero reconoce que las cajas sufrirán más la crisis que los bancos - (14-05-09) Expansión.com		Zapatero admits that the Cajas will suffer the crisis more than the banks - (14-05-09) Expansión.com
El presidente del Gobierno asegura que su objetivo no es la reestructuración de la banca, sino «salvar todo aquello que podamos del sistema financiero».		The Prime Minister claims that his goal is not to restructure banking, but "to salvage everything we can of the financial system".
Si la semana pasada el Banco de España apuntaba que la crisis no afectará con la misma intensidad a todas las entidades bancarias, el presidente del Gobierno, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, fue ayer más preciso al apuntar a las cajas como las principales damnificadas del ajuste económico que vive España. «Es más fácil que sean cajas que bancos, se lo anticipo», subrayó durante su intervención en el debate sobre el estado de la Nación.		If last week it was the Bank of Spain that pointed out that the crisis will not affect all the banking institutions with the same intensity, the Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was yesterday more precise when he pointed at the cajas as the main victims of the economic adjustment Spain is living. "It is easier that it will be cajas than banks, I can anticipate", he stressed during his intervention in the State of the Nation debate.
Menos preciso fue, sin embargo, respecto a la posible reestructuración del sector. El presidente lanzó un par de mensajes que da alas a la teoría de que el Ejecutivo prepara una manguerazo o inyección indiscrimada de dinero público a las entidades, sin condiciones a cambio, al estilo de las medidas puestas en marcha por Sarkozy en Francia. Destacó que su objetivo no es la reestructuración de la banca española, sino «salvar todo aquello que podamos del sector financiero si se ve afectado», garantizando la competitividad de las entidades españolas en el futuro.		He was, however, less precise regarding a possible restructuring of the sector. The president threw out a couple of messages which give wings to the theory that the Government is preparing a swoop of the hosepipe, an indiscriminate injection of public money into the entities, with no conditions, in the style of the measures set in motion by Sarkozy in France. He stressed that his goal is not the restructuring of Spanish banking, but "to salvage all that we can in the financial sector if it is affected", guaranteeing the future competitiveness of Spanish [credit] entities in the future.

Given that the cajas are quasi-public and intimately enmeshed with the political party system in Spain, it is maybe understandable that the government will rescue them. But it shouldn't be done. A few weeks ago Caja de Castilla-La Mancha was intervened by the banking regulator as any other insolvent institution should in the future, rather than being rescued with a swoop of the government's hosepipe.

The brainless should not be in banking. — Willem Buitler

Anglo Disease strikes Germany too

La distribution inégale des patrimoines en Allemagne

Les inégalités de patrimoine se sont accrues entre 2002 et 2007 selon une étude du Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW, Institut allemand pour des recherches économiques) basée sur le panel socio économique (SOEP). Le décile le plus aisé de la population possède 61,1 % des biens privés, contre 57,8 % en 2002, tandis que 70 % des personnes moins aisées ne disposent que d'environ 9 %. Alors que les riches sont devenus plus riches, les moins bien lotis sont devenus plus pauvres ces dernières années en Allemagne.

Les raisons de cette évolution sont au moins en partie imputables à la réforme des droits de succession et de l'impôt sur le revenu du capital, qui favorise les plus aisés. En Allemagne, pour être allocataire du nouveau Arbeitslosengeld II (équivalent du RMI français), il faut avoir liquidé son épargne au préalable, une réforme qui est au détriment notamment des personnes âgées dans les nouveaux Länder, selon les chercheurs du DIW.

The most strikingnumber is the difference between average wealth (88,000 eruos) and median wealth (15,000 euros) - and the difference in rates of increase for each over the past 5 years.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes